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How to Do Amazon Keyword Research Pt. 2: Keyword Research Tools & Tips

We’ve already referenced using a tool like Google Trends when first starting out with your keyword research for Amazon. Google Keyword Planner is another free Google tool you can set into motion with regards to analyzing your competition’s performance. Plugin the website to your competitor(s) and you’ll be able to see what existing keywords they’re ranking for.

If you want to get a little more specific, AMZ Tracker offers a toolkit for sellers that allows you monitor your own keyword rankings and those of your competitors: all in one dashboard. They also have built-in keyword research tools, as well as access to Deepwords, a long-tail keyword search engine.

Jungle Scout is another platform offering robust Amazon keyword research capability, if you’re looking for options.

Additionally, a more direct way of approaching keyword research on Amazon is through Amazon Retail Analytics Premium (ARAP). With premium functionality as a seller, you’re able to perform competitive research against top-selling Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs) and the keywords they perform well for. This is the tool the team at Amplio uses for our customers.

If you don’t have access to AARP, however, your best approach would be to have automatic paid campaigns running for different products by ASIN level. Over time, you can begin to accumulate customer search data that points to specific keywords shown to convert for what you’re selling.

Top Amazon Keyword Research Tips

With keywords in hand, there are a few more things to consider as you start to apply them to your product listings on Amazon.

Stay Relevant

We can’t stress it enough, but relevance is key on Amazon. Unlike Google, if you’re not advertising what you’re actually selling, people will call you out in your customer reviews. And this ultimately reflects back on your customer experience.

Don’t Be Overly Promotional

In theory, a good product should be able to sell itself. What you’re doing through your paid and organic keywording efforts is merely boosting its visibility. Because of this, avoid getting too promotional or overhyped in your copy. Again, people will publically point out inconsistencies where they see them.

Remember the Importance of Conversion

The bottom line is Amazon aims to be profitable, plain and simple.

Optimizing for Multiple Keywords

Unlike Google, Amazon won’t penalize you for stuffing your product listing content full of keywords. Keyword density doesn’t play the same role in their algorithm.

Above all else, Amazon cares about two things regarding keywords:

The customer experience. Are you driving traffic to a relevant page and/or product?

Does your product sell and benefit Amazon’s ability to make a profit?

With this in mind, there’s no harm in optimizing around multiple keywords in your product listings. Just make sure that the experience is also optimized for your end user with relevant and relatable listing information.

Consider Paid vs. Organic

After all, your goal with optimizing for product searches and product ads is to either:

Appear next to products that are either exactly what people are looking for.

Appear next to products that have a good enough value proposition and price point in comparison to well-known branded products.

This means conducting research on and off Amazon around who your competitors are.

Our team at Amplio worked with a premium seller of headphones that, in first starting out, was completely in the dark as to who their competition was. We scraped data from different consumer reports online, plugged our findings into a tool called SpyFu, analyzed for recurring themes, and then applied them to their strategy on Amazon.

While the exact approach regarding how to do Amazon keyword research may vary in complexity based on market saturation, you can see the number of moving parts at play at any given point in time.

Hosting an Amazon Giveaway is a paid option unique to Amazon that would also be worth exploring in relation to going up against larger brand name competitors.

Sellers can set up a listing on the Giveaways page that allows people to enter for a chance to win a specified product. You can then use giveaway engagement to help rank for generic terms associated with different value propositions.

Note that you won’t be able to set these giveaways up to correspond with a branded keyword like “Bose headphones”, but you can for something like “Bluetooth-enabled wireless headphones.”

Allow your organic and paid efforts to work off each other by filling your listings with certain keywords, and then advertising around those same keywords. You’ll find that, if done strategically, it doesn’t take a lot of money to start gaining momentum and traction around the products you have to sell.

If one product converts better, they’ll surface it more heavily over others. For this reason, keep those conversions in mind as you review overall performance and make sure you’re remaining competitive in both price point and value proposition.

Final Thoughts: How to Do Amazon Keyword Research: Keyword Research Tools & Tips

The recipe for keywording done right on Amazon really comes down to only a handful of ingredients: research, intent, relevancy, and conversions. You can’t have an understanding of one without the other.

Kevin is the VP of Growth & Strategy for Amplio Digital and has been with the company since 2014. Kevin drives growth for Amplio and Amazon strategy for its clients. His team manages over $250MM in annual GMV on Amazon for brand manufacturers across North America and EMEA.